Editorial 2023/2
Dear readers,
you are holding in your hands this year's second issue of the Library: A Library Review. You can read two papers in the reviewed section, both concerning historical collections. In the first paper, Abbess with a Book in the Czech Middle Ages, we will learn what kind of readers novices, novice masters, sacristans, prioresses or abbesses were in the Czech medieval religious orders. Based on the study of manuscripts preserved in the collections of the National Library of the Czech Republic, the author documents that they were not only educated women who could read fluently, but were also active commissioners of manuscripts, most often liturgical books, which they needed for their spiritual practice. They were also fond of books of hours and passionals.
In the second peer-reviewed paper, the authors present us with potential use of the VSC 8000 video spectrum comparator in the study of defaced ownership notes in the incunabula of the National Library of the Czech Republic. The use of the instrument enables to achieve visibility and paleographic reading of owners’ inscriptions in early printed materials. Such ownership notes have been intentionally made illegible in the past for various reasons. Using examples of several incunabula from the collections of the National Library of the Czech Republic, the authors illustrate why the notes were rendered illegible and reconstruct the reading history of the printed materials. In their study, they deal with one of the types of provenance signs – handwritten ownership records. Based on the research using the VSC 8000 video spectral comparator, these recordings are being rediscovered.
The next paper presents the issue that affects our everyday work, which is the ergonomics of the working environment. This issue is closely related to the area of occupational safety and health, the so-called OSH. In his paper Introduction to Ergonomics in Libraries, the author explains what the individual areas of ergonomics are – social, cognitive, environmental, and physical ergonomics. He sets all these areas of ergonomics in the work in a library environment and shows how to take care of one's work environment on specific examples.
The term teaching librarian and the work of a teaching librarian is presented in a paper titled Looking at the Past, Present and Possible Future of Teaching Librarians. The author aims to describe the educational role of university and academic libraries through the person of the teaching librarian. He explains this role mainly in the context of the Anglo-Saxon environment, where there is professional literature on this topic and there is a discussion. The paper also uses the terms liaison librarian and subject librarian and explains their specifics. At the end of the article, he introduces us to the situation of this specific library profession in our environment. He also draws attention to two research initiatives, a comparison of which can be found in the last part of the paper.
We will stay with the teaching librarian in the next paper. In the paper Information Behaviour in Academic Context and Information Education from the Perspective of a Teaching Librarian at CTU, the author describes the issue of information behaviour of Generation Z students and examines it from the perspective of a teaching librarian. She also points out that while Gen Z people consider themselves technologically savvy, this does not mean that they have digital and information literacy. In the paper, she also mentions what competencies (technological, social, professional, language, pedagogical and didactic) a teaching librarian must have. The paper describes some specific experiences of a teaching librarian in the environment of the Czech Technical University in Prague.
The European Social Fund project "Strengthening the level of social dialogue in sectors and supporting the adaptation of sectors to change", a platform for librarianship, examines the prevalence and conditions of teleworking in Czech libraries. The working group prepared two questionnaires – one for employers and the other for employees. The aim was to find out which employers from the ranks of libraries provide work from home and what are the conditions for such work, how working from home is evaluated, etc., and, at the same time, what reasons lead certain libraries not to arrange this form of work. The second questionnaire, intended for employees, aimed to ask how satisfied employees are with working from home, what it means for them, whether they have the equipment from their employer to perform such work, etc. The paper is published under the title Conditions for providing remote work in libraries – survey results.
At the end of this year, the Chairman of our Editorial Board and a long-time employee and head of the National Library of the Czech Republic, Mgr. Adolf Knoll, is retiring. We would like to thank him, with a little profile article, for the work he has done for our journal. He has been the chairman of the editorial board since 2012 and during that time he has contributed his knowledge, experience and insights to the successful operation of this periodical. Mr Chairman, thank you very much for everything! In December this year, our former colleague Mgr. Eva Novotná celebrates her 90th birthday. To express our thanks for her work for the National Library, her colleagues prepared a profile feature article, in which they recall everything important that the first head of the PR department did in her career. And there was a lot of it!
We publish a review of a French book by Michèle Bilimoff, which deals with the description of flowers and animals admirably depicted in the medieval manuscript, the so-called Great Hours of the Duchess and later Queen of France Anne of Brittany (Les Jardins d'Anne de Bretagne: les plantes au Moyen Âge: d'après les Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. latin 9474).
The issue closes with the traditional sections bringing some recommended titles from the Library of Library Literature, which introduce us to new acquisitions in the collection, and New Library Science Publications, this time on the interesting and relevant topic of digital temperance.
On behalf of the editorial team, I thank you all for your support and wish you good health and fortune in the coming year. Renáta Krejčí Salátová
